Birding, Posting, Lifers and a Lifer List

It was not too long ago that I first learned what a "lifer" is in birding. A "lifer" is the first time a new species of bird has been seen by a particular person. Many birders keep a lifer list, a list of all the different species of birds they've seen. Many of them also record the date and the place the lifer was seen. I've loved wildlife all of my life, but my passion for birds took an uptick a few years ago, sometime after Covid started, and I first started my own lifer list. First I started an Excel spreadsheet listing each species of bird and where I first saw it, then about a year ago I added a column on the spreadsheet for the date I did my first blog post on that bird. My spreadsheet entries were aided by my previous submissions to iNaturalist where I can go back and find each bird I've photographed and submitted and the place and date the photo was taken. I started on iNaturalist on July 18, 2020 and when I started I went back through photos I'd previously taken over the years and submitted them with dates and places to the best of my memory.  I also went back to my previous posts on birds on Cannundrums since I started blogging on March 18, 2009. Obviously, most of the dates and places for commonly seen birds were of recent origin as my memory is not that good, but I do have some specific birds on my lifer list that include old sightings, including a northern saw whet owl I caught when I was in grade school (and is still the only northern saw whet owl I've ever seen). Then I determined to do a blogpost on each species of bird I've seen as part of my lifer list record. That was about a year ago and just yesterday I posted my last post on a bird that was previously a lifer for me. As of yesterday, my lifer list was 970 birds and as of yesterday, I've done a post for each one. I started a daily string of blog posts beginning August 14, 2025, a string of about 362 posts, the vast majority of which have been on birds. 

Until just recently my criteria for my lifer list was only birds I'd photographed. Within the last year or so I've expanded it to birds I've seen but was unable to photograph. This was based on the fact that I've now used a number of human birding guides that have identified the birds I've seen and I was confident their identifications were correct. Many of the the birds were also in foreign countries where I'm not likely to go again to get a photograph. I specifically indicate in my spreadsheet when a lifer has only been seen and not photographed, and that number is now 31, but also includes one bird that I only heard, under a special circumstance. I was with a birding guide in Arizona and we heard and he saw only the second recorded black-vented oriole in the State of Arizona. The first sighting was in 1991, 35 years earlier. It was broadcast out into the birding world by an eBird rare bird alert and we had people drive in that day from many miles away just to try and see that bird themselves. 

I had a goal to get to 1,000 lifers by the end of 2026, but it is looking unlikely. We were originally scheduled to go to Uganda in July which has lots of bird species. But we had to cancel our trip because of the War in Iran and the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, right near the border with Uganda. It was replaced by a trip to Turkey and Greece where I saw a few birds, but nothing to the extent I would have in Uganda. We still have a trip to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia scheduled for the end of the year, but they are not great birding areas either. 

Black-Headed Saltator

I did a post on the black-headed saltator months ago and somehow it got written over. In fact, when I google "cannundrums black-headed saltator," it brings up my post on the indigo bunting on April 14, 2026. Like the indigo bunting, I was with Judy in Tikal NP in northern Guatemala with a guide, Rony. He was represented to us as the best bird guide in northern Guatemala, and he was amazing at finding them. However, a number of his observations were off. That is, he identified the bird as one thing, and when I got home and posted my photo on iNaturalist, it was suggested as something else and then that something else was reconfirmed by other identifiers. In this case he identified the bird as a green jay.

Only this photo is halfway decent, the rest below are just bits and pieces. 

   

Illustration from Birds of the World.

Green Jay, ssp. yncas, from Birds of the World. It is a different ssp. than the ones in Tikal, NP, but it gives a general description. The black-headed saltator and green jay do look quite similar. 

Illustration from Birds of the World.

Yellow-Shouldered Grassquit

On February 18, 2023 we were on a genealogical trip in Jamaica searching for information about my third great grandfather, a captain of a ship in the slave trade in the 1790s. We were with my cousin, Chad Cannon, and spent time in various places about the island that my ancestor had visited. As part of our visit I engaged Lyndon Johnson of Arrowhead Birding to see some of the birds of Jamaica, many of which are endemic to the island. We started at Hotel Mockingbird Hill in Drapers and then drove back to Kingston through the rugged Blue Mountains. While there Lyndon pointed out a yellow-shouldered grassquit, one of the species endemic to Jamaica. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a photo of it. At this point, I don't even remember if it was a female or a male. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World (the arrow pointing to Jamaica).

Swamp Flycatcher

On July 19, 2025 we visited the Mabamba Swamp on the edge of Lake Victoria, in Uganda, and took a wooden boat with an outboard motor into the swamp with our guide, Wilson, and another man steering at the back of the boat. One of the birds we saw, which flew before I could get a photo, was a swamp flycatcher. There are two subspecies and we saw ssp. infulata which is found in Uganda, Rwanda, western Kenya, northwestern Tanzania, northeastern Zambia, South Sudan and northeastern DRC. The swamp flycatcher is only found in Africa. 

Illustration of ssp. infulata from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World. 

Eurasian Jay

 I've seen two Eurasian jays, but have no photos. The first was near the Tagus Estuary in Portugal on June 25, 2022 with Bernardo Barreto of Birds & Nature. The second was earlier this year, on June 22, 2026, in Yildiz Park in Istanbul, Turkey with Dogan Bilge of Eskapas. It is a gorgeous bird with 33 subspecies that have quite a bit of variation. I believe I saw ssp. fasciaatus in Portugal and ssp. anatoliae in Turkey.  

Illustration of ssp. atricapillus from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World.

Jerdon's Bushlark

In March 2019 Judy and I spent time in Sri Lanka and one of our destinations was Bundala NP. We saw a wide variety of animals, including monkeys, crocodiles, turtles, an elephant and lots of birds. One lifer, the only one I've seen, was Jerdon's bushlark.

Illustration from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World. 

Ruddy Woodcreeper

On March 19, 2026 Judy and I were in Tikal NP in northeastern Guatemala. Our guide, Rony, had a ruddy woodcreeper ahead of him standing on the trunk of a tree and I couldn't get my camera up quick enough to get a focused photo of it. Birds of the World describes it as "a secretive denizen of foothill forests in the American tropics", and "highly dependent on army ant swarms for food..." 

Illustration from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World.

Common Buzzard

On July 3, 2022 Judy and I were in Portugal with a guide, Bernardo Barreto of Birds and Nature Tours in Portugal, taking a birding tour of the Sado Estuary. He identified a common buzzard which I got a poor photograph of and reported it on iNaturalist. I did a blog post on it on August 17, 2022. Two other identifiers agreed with me, but then a third disagreed and labeled it a black kite. One of the other prior identifiers agreed and changed their identification. I looked closer and changed my mind as well. So although I've previously posted on the common buzzard, this is my first post on a real common buzzard. 

I've subsequently seen two common buzzards. The first was in Maulbronn, Germany on May 23, 2025. I was with Judy's entire family (all siblings and their spouses) on a family trip to honor and recognize her deceased grandfather. We were in the town square and the common buzzard was flying over. 

At the time I thought this was my second common buzzard siting. 

Then recently, we were with Judy's family again, all of here siblings and their spouses, on a Viking Cruise which originated in Istanbul and ended in Athens. We were docked at Heraklion harbor on the island of Crete. They'd scheduled an afternoon shore excursion and the morning was free. So I went to the harbor entrance and hired a taxi to take me to the Aposelemis Wildlife Refuge. The driver took me to the dam instead, which turned out to have a few birds, but nothing of real interest. I asked him to drive me up the road into the mountains and we crested a ridge and drove into the Langada Valley, at over 5,000 feet in elevation. There I got photos of what the taxi driver said was a local hawk, standing on a power line. Later, iNaturalist identified it as a common buzzard. That makes two, both seen when I was on trips with Judy's entire family, once in Germany and the other in Greece. 

There are lots of subspecies of conflicting number. It appears that both of my sightings were ssp. buteo. When I hear the term "buzzard," I still think of a vulture. Something that comes from my youth. AI says that people in North America often use the term "buzzard" to refer to vultures. Some believe it is because early North Americans mistakenly called vultures "buzzards" because they soared high in the sky like the buzzards back in Europe. Another take on the matter is here. 

An illustration of ssp. buteo from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World. 

Common Redstart

In June 2019 we had a firm trip to Iceland, Greenland and Denmark. Then Judy and split off at the end and traveled to Poland and Kaliningrad, an oblast of Russia, where my grandfather, Edwin Q. Cannon, served an LDS mission from 1907 to 1910. In a park near the Kaliningrad Cathedral I photographed a common redstart, my one and only, so far, of that species. 

There are two subspecies and I saw the nominate ssp. phoenicurus, found all over Europe and into Siberia. Redstarts get their name from their orange-red tails. "Start" is an old word for tail. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World.

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World.

Swamp Nightjar

In July 2025 we stayed at the Nkima Forest Lodge on a hill above the Mabamba Swamp and Lake Victoria. I went out with an excellent local birding guide, Wilson, and he guided me to a swamp jar, which I flushed, and then went to where it flew and flushed again. I was not able to get a photo, but I was very close to it. By far the closest I have gotten to a nightjar, I was within a few feet of it when it flushed. 

Illustration of a female flying from Birds of the World.

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World. 

Monk Parakeet

On July 23, 2021 Judy and I were visiting Andrew in New York City and we took the subway into Brooklyn and visited the Green-Wood Cemetery which houses the remains of Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Morse, Horace Greeley and many other distinguished and not so distinguished New Yorkers. I was excited to see the monk parakeet that Andrew said were all over the entrance facade to the cemetery. 

Illustration from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World. Wikipedia notes that they are native to South America, but feral populations can be found all over the world. It notes populations in New York and specifically mentions Green-Wood Cemetery. 

Lincoln's Sparrow

In July 2021 I was with Judy in Horseheads, New York, near the southern end of Seneca Lake. I got up early for a 64 mile drive to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, five miles east of Seneca Falls at the northern end of Cayuga Lake. It was there that I saw my one and only, so far, Lincoln's sparrow. 

It is a less common sparrow that is often hidden under thick ground cover and often near water. It is very secretive and often not seen or heard, even where they are common. 

Illustration from Birds of the World. 

Range from Birds of the World.

Dark-Eyed Junco

The dark-eyed junco is a surprisingly varied bird with 14 or 15 subspecies. At one time they were considered separate species, but they interbreed extensively in areas where they contact each other. There is an Oregon or brown-backed group which includes ssp. Thurber's dark-eyed junco found in the interior of California from San Bernardino to Modoc County. That is the ssp. I am most familiar with. 

Seen near the Chilao Visitor Center in the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles. 

Seen at Lake Silverwood near the Cajon Pass in the San Bernardino Mountains. 

In our backyard in Redlands, California. 

In Oak Glen, San Bernardino Mountains. 

It also includes the Nevada dark-eyed junco, ssp. mutabilis, found in the Great Basin. I saw those below at Fish Springs NWR near Delta, Utah.

 Ssp. pinosus is found in coastal California from Santa Barbara to Del Norte County. 

Found at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum in Santa Cruz, California.

Found in Portola Redwood State Park in northern California.

I'm not sure what ssp. these are, found in Caprock Canyon State Park in the Texas Panhandle.

This slate-colored dark-eyed junco was seen in Shawnee Mission Park in Kansas.

Illustration of a slate-colored ssp. hyemalis male from Birds of the World. Females are less colorful. 

Illustration of a brown-backed ssp. oreganus male from Birds of the World. Females are less colorful.

Range from Birds of the World.